Category Archives: Phoenix

Phoenix to Firestorm Viewer Tutorial

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One of the impressive things about the Phoenix-Firestorm (PH/FS) team is the documentation they are creating for their viewers. From what I see being asked in the PH/FS group and SL Forum I suspect many PH/FS users are unaware of the documentation to be found in the team’s PH/FS Wiki.

Phoenix to Firestorm Migration

I suspect one of the most over looked yet useful articles in the PH/FS Wiki is the Migration Guide. The article is short, by my thinking, just 750 words. It does link to a YouTube video: V1’ify Your Firestorm Experience! The video runs about 12 minutes.

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The underlying theme in the Migration Guide is to tweak the Version 2 viewer Interface to be more like the Version 1 Viewer Interface. Having this flexibility built into Firestorm allows for a more pleasant migration experience.

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Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1185 Released Review

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Today (8/2) the Firestorm-Phoenix team released a new version of the Phoenix Viewer. The announcement says a new griefer-crasher fix has been added along with several bug fixes. The full list is in the release notes. I’ll cover the ones I find interesting.

Phoenix Viewer Download and Release Notes

Blocking Phoenix

The rumor persists that Linden Lab will block Series 1 viewers. It doesn’t seem to matter how often the Lab says they won’t. Some rumors say all V1 viewers will be blocked. In general those rumors come from people misunderstanding what has been said and what will happen.

Rate of Change Continues to Climb

Most Series 1 or alternately labeled V1 viewers will never render mesh. The changes needed to a V1 viewer to accommodate the mesh render pipeline are massive and complex. It is easier to just start over with V2 code and add V1 features. Adding V2 features to a V1 viewer require extensive rewriting and are time consuming, which is why we see the V1 viewers fallen farther and farther behind the V2 versions.

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Phoenix Hour Summary

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Shug Maitland asked me about a subject that came up in the Phoenix Hour. I’ve been busy with RL this week and not keeping up as much as usual. I had no clue what I was being asked about. I took the time to see what the New Web Profiles fuss was that came up. Also see: New Second Life Web Profiles on Demo

 

Video Start

Link to video: July 12 Phoenix Hour

0:00 to 4:36 is about Phaylen’s bake fail.

Horrors of Bake Fail

4:36 – Jessica says Firestorm Beta 2 now has 25,000 users and growing.  Jessica says they see lots of new users that have not used Firestorm before. My immediate question is how they know if you have used Firestorm before or not?

5:43 – Firestorm and Phoenix support confusion, people forget to say which viewer  they are asking questions about in the support group. Remember to give them a hint when asking questions.

6:50 – Phoenix update, no date for the next release. They do plan to support Phoenix until the grid makes it obsolete. Obsolete being when it fails to render the world correctly and the Lab services it needs go off line. While Linden Lab has said they will not block series 1 viewers, they do not plan to provide the support services they need forever.

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Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1102 Released Review

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The new Phoenix version has Enhanced Avatar Physics. This wasn’t planned. It is a bug fix, as odd as that sounds. The problem is that series 1 viewers started having problems rendering avatars wearing the new SL Viewer’s Physics Layers. So, Phoenix  Viewer users would see avatars wearing the new layer as a Ruth. Oddly the SLV2 people would see Phoenix users Ruthed too.

The details of the problem are in a JIRA report: VWR-25479

While one does need to upgrade their copy of Phoenix to the latest version, one is not required to use Avatar Physics.

I gather that the Phoenix Team had pretty much moved on to Firestorm. But, suddenly the realization the Phoenix viewer was not going to correctly render the avatars of those using the future Firestorm, Kirsten, Singularity, Dolphin, or any other viewer that used Physics Layers. This was worth a fix.

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Phoenix Viewer Release Candidate 1.5.2.1050

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No sooner do I see the Kirsten release than up pops a Phoenix Viewer 1050 release. This is another Release Candidate. While the Phoenix team is calling this an RC they say they will provide support for it. So, again the lines between esoteric alpha, beta, RC, and final versions gets fuzzier, at least from my side.

Update – Bug Fix Release

This release is mostly bug fixes and improvements to existing features. The goal was to get a stable viewer. Over the previous part of this year most developers have been getting previous features and new code and features from Linden Lab working. That has lead to crash prone viewers.

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Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.977 Beta

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Phoenix Viewer

Phoenix Viewer 977

It seems a number of people have been having trouble running the Phoenix Viewer 908. Some users crash after a few minutes and some after a longer time. The Phoenix team has been looking for the problem. This Beta release is a step in confirming they have found the problem. They need more testers on many different type of hardware to test the viewer. So, it you are one of those that has had problems with Phoenix crashing, get the new 977 and give it try. If you crash, file a report on the Phoenix JIRA.

Download & Install

The release announcement advises us that this install will clear the cache. For most of us that just means you may notice your first login rez taking just a bit longer.

Windows users have a choice between an SSE and an SSE2 viewer. To know which your computer will use the Phoenix Wiki SSE page links you to a handy tool that examines your computer and checks what type of SSE support it has. SSE2 is better than SSE. Newly made computers support SSE4. Two year old computers probably support SSE3. So, don’t sell your computer short, just check it.

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Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.908 Released Review

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Phoenix Viewer

Phoenix Viewer 908

Today a new Phoenix Viewer version is out. Yay! This version has lots of bug fixes and should be way more stable than even 818. (Download) This may be the last upgrade and is certainly one of the last upgrades for the Phoenix Viewer. Get your copy now.

Also the Firestorm Viewer Preview 2 was released today. I’ll get to it in a separate review(Firestorm Viewer Review). OOPS… My mistake. I saw a new Preview Announcement and did not realize it was a RESEND. Only Preview 1 is out.

Update: Listening in on the Group Chat, several people are having problems with version 908 and uninstalling it. No word from the Phoenix Team as to how pervasive problems are or aren’t. Be sure you get the correct Windows version, SSE or not. Be sure you clear your cache before starting the viewer. After the install and before starting the viewer reboot the computer. And any time you have a viewer problem or viewer crash, reboot the computer.

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